A European Agenda on Migration

By Richmond Chambers

13 May 2015

The European Commission has presented its European Agenda on Migration, which outlines the steps to be taken in the coming years to better manage migration in all its aspects, as well as immediate measures to be taken to respond to the crisis situation in the Mediterranean.

The collective EU migration policy has fallen short, says the Commission, and therefore the European Agenda on Migration contains a set of mutually coherent and reinforcing initiatives, based around four pillars, to manage migration better in all its aspects.

These four pillars are:

Reducing the incentives for irregular migration, notably by seconding European migration liaison officers to EU Delegations in key third countries; amending the Frontex legal basis to strengthen its role on return; a new action plan with measures that aim to transform people smuggling into high risk, low return criminal activity and addressing the root causes through development cooperation and humanitarian assistance;

Border management – saving lives and securing external borders, notably by strengthening the role and capacity of Frontex; helping strengthen the capacity of third countries to manage their borders; pooling further, where necessary, certain coast guard functions at EU level;

Europe's duty to protect: The priority is to ensure a full and coherent implementation of the Common European Asylum System, notably by promoting systematic identification and fingerprinting and with efforts to reduce its abuses by strengthening the Safe Country of Origin provisions of the Asylum Procedure Directive; evaluating and possibly revising the Dublin Regulation in 2016;

A new policy on legal migration: The focus is on maintaining a Europe in demographic decline as an attractive destination for migrants, notably by modernising and overhauling the Blue Card scheme, by reprioritising integration policies, and by maximising the benefits of migration policy to individuals and countries of origin, including by facilitating cheaper, faster and safer remittance transfers.

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